Facing Up to the Indecisiveness Issue

RIGHT after the congressional elections last November, Richard Nixon surveyed the political terrain and told his intimates that Senator Edward Kennedy would most likely be the Democratic candidate for President in 1972. But what of Maine's Edmund Muskie? "The George Romney of the Democratic Party," Nixon scoffed. In 1967, Romney blew an early lead among the Republican contenders by appearing dimwitted when he confessed to having been "brainwashed" about Viet Nam. Now Republicans publicly and Democratic rivals privately are in full cry after Muskie for what might seem to be a similarly fatal failing: indecisiveness.

In some of his political speeches these days, Spiro Agnew has a laugh line that goes like this: "I guess you've heard that Senator Muskie has taken a firm position on a major issue. He has set Dec. 31 as the deadline for the end of the year." The Administration's plan, reports Conservative Columnist Kevin Phillips (The Emerging Republican Majority), "is to hold Muskie's chameleon-like indecision and issue-flipflopping up to the spotlight--and even to ridicule."

Muskie has a problem, but Phillips defined it badly. The difficulty, which could become a serious impediment to his candidacy, is that Muskie often gets in his own way when he tries to explain himself. It is not that he says one thing in one place and another elsewhere. Once he has made up his mind, he normally sticks to his view, though like any reasonable man he can alter his stand to fit new information or circumstances. Where he goes wrong most often is in failing to communicate his views plainly.

Muskie's style is inconsistent. He can be very prim, exuding down-East caution and a lawyer's precision as he quibbles over the exact meaning of something that he has said earlier. On more relaxed occasions, he can be candid to the point of naivete and sloppy in his expression. That variation in the manner of Muskie's answers baffles even his friends; the seeming contradictions in the substance of what he says have made him vulnerable to attack. Pros within his own party believe that Muskie should make his positions plainer.

Among the several issues on which Muskie has sometimes made himself look awkward:

THE MIDEAST. In Israel's Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 war, Muskie answered a kibbutznik's question about that disputed territory by saying: "If I were in your shoes. I would hold on." Was that a pro-Israeli statement? Did that not differ from U.S. policy? In fact, Muskie was impulsively expressing sympathy for the plight of those Israelis. Diplomatic blunder? Yes. Indecisiveness? No.

THE SALT TALKS. After a conversation with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin, Muskie said on a television show that he had told the Russian leader that he and his colleagues in Congress were trying to cut back U.S. arms spending --and that many Americans do not share President Nixon's views on dealing with the Soviet Union. Undercutting the SALT talks and undermining U.S. foreign policy? No, said Muskie, he was simply talking as a ''private citizen." The ploy is familiar: Richard Nixon used it when he hobnobbed with world leaders on a 1967 swing, ostensibly as a lawyer representing the Reader's Digest. The fact is that there are no private citizens on presidential campaign trails. Score one for agility, not indecision.

REVENUE SHARING. While Muskie has favored revenue sharing, one news report said that he had shifted his position when he told a gathering of mayors that he did not back Nixon's plan. Muskie's people insist that he has consistently approved the principle of sharing, and that what he was trying to tell the mayors was that Nixon's scheme has little chance in Congress. This time Muskie failed to say what he meant with precision.

TROOPS IN EUROPE. A year ago Muskie backed a plan to withdraw American troops from Europe; after a trip there in January, he confessed that he was "rethinking" his position. While Muskie has not changed his stand, he is looking it over in the light of his conversations with West German Chancellor Willy Brandt --who argues that a U.S. pullout would weaken his Ostpolitik. A fiipflop? Perhaps, or perhaps only a legitimate reconsideration prompted by an altered situation.

VIET NAM. In January 1966, after visiting Indochina, Muskie warned against further escalation and urged negotiations to end the war. Thereafter he privately pressed President Johnson to stop bombing North Viet Nam--but backed the 1968 Democratic majority plank on the war, a politically motivated step that he is not proud of. A year later he called for "orderly" U.S. withdrawal. In 1971 Muskie at first refused for technical reasons to support the McGovern-Hatfield amendment demanding a complete U.S. pullout by the end of 1971; having received considerable pressure, he now supports the amendment. The Republican national chairman, Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, calls Muskie a "political Rip van Winkle" on the war. Clearly a case of indecision or soul searching, but few U.S. politicians can claim a consistent position on Viet Nam.

In other areas, Muskie has a strong record--for example, legislation on clean air and water, urban redevelopment, civil rights and antipoverty. And he is increasingly sensitive to the decisiveness issue. In what appears to be part of a conscious design to show himself to be forthright, he publicly endorsed last weekend's antiwar rally in Washington. Earlier he fired a formidable salvo at the FBI, accusing the G-men of conducting widespread surveillance of last year's Earth Day demonstrations against pollution. "If antipollution rallies are a subject of intelligence concern," Muskie asked, "is anything immune?" (In fact, the Department of Justice insists that the FBI sent agents to only four Earth Day rallies.)

The task of the front runner is to avoid boring the electorate with a drumfire of statements that he may later regret --while remaining in view. Muskie must also steer clear of the Romney trap: disputes with the press over what he did or did not say. Otherwise reporters will be dusting off the old ROMNEY key on their typewriters--the one, the Washington gag has it, that prints at one stroke: "Governor Romney later explained that what he really meant was . . ." That could be the end of presidential hopes, and Muskie knows it.

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